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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bunnysaurus, 20 Sep 2009
The story of the end of Bunny Munro is a story about a dinosaur who has not realised that his species is extinct.
Bunny is really not a very nice person at all. It's not simply his antediluvian attitude towards women, but also his uncaring solipsism. Certainly, his son is caught in his orbit, but Bunny barely seems to notice him until towards the end. And, really, it's the ending that gives the book any meaning, and changes the bathos to pathos.
I don't know...it is well written, although some repeated phrases started to jar a little (the repetition of 'or something' after several metaphors). But I found it really hard to empathise with Bunny, to care in any way for this drunken lecher. After all, here is a man who, in the first few pages, drives his wife to suicide. Yet I plugged on with it and, when we meet Bunny's father, when we see Bunny Senior, Bunny and Bunny Junior, and we get some inkling of the motives of and background to Bunny's story, then maybe there is some sympathy. But the sympathy is for Bunny Junior; his father is clearly a lost cause.
In places, it reminded me of 'Bad Lieutenant'. Set in Brighton and the South Coast, the comparison still works, but the book is certainly no religious text, even given the hints of supernatural goings-on.
As a character study, it doesn't really have a great deal of depth. Bunny is simply thoroughly and pretty well two-dimensionally unpleasant. Bunny Junior is the only glimmer of light in this novel. In some ways, the Death of Bunny Munro may be the saving of Bunny Junior.
Still, it is a good read, but a bit disappointing overall. I'm not sure what I was hoping for, but if it hadn't been for Bunny's obsession with Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavinge, I'd have thought this was a 50s 'period piece'. As I said, Bunny is a dinosaur.
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